TO KNOW JAY MARIOTTI IS TO KNOW EVERYTHING HE’S THINKING. OPINIONS EXPLODE FROM HIM AT ALL TIMES AND ON ALL TOPICS, DEPLETING OXYGEN IN THEIR WAKE.

No doubt this has helped shape his reputation as the city’s resident provocateur scourge. And although he thunderously left his back-page perch at the Chicago Sun-Times a few months ago, he is still widely regarded as a know-it-all pariah.

Always a defiant outsider, Mariotti, 49, now finds himself further removed from the local media establishment than ever before, leaving a significant void in the cacophony of Chicago sports filibustering. Controversial from the get-go, he came to town in 1991 as the Sun-Times’ newest marquee columnist: SPORTS WITH AN ATTITUDE promised the billboards, announcing his arrival from the noble-but-failed National Sports Daily.

For the ensuing 17 years, Mariotti, who lives in the northern suburbs with his wife and two daughters, delivered on that promise prodigiously, writing 300-plus yearly columns, each an examination of our sports scene as he saw it—rose-colored lenses and civic sentimentalism proudly missing from his view. He angered readers as much as entertained them. “Maybe if he wrote solely for professional wrestling, I could understand his venomous rants,” detractors have remarked.

South Siders in particular are bred to loathe him—his long-standing feuds with White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and manager Ozzie Guillen reek of the blood variety. Coworkers have characterized him as boorish and petulant; his former Sun-Times colleague/arch-nemesis Rick Telander termed him a “hair-dyed and eyebrow-plucked creature.” (For the record, he maintains he neither plucks nor waxes.) But clearly, Mariotti resonated with readers in large numbers, and he was rewarded with handsome spoils—reportedly a six-figure salary and a recurring gig on ESPN’s popular Around the Horn, a 30-minute talk show/game show hybrid that’s now six years and more than 1,200 episodes into its run.

I met Mariotti six weeks after his resignation from the Sun-Times. With trademark vehemence and mad gesticulation, he explained to me that he quit the paper because he considered its website and overall digital media strategy deplorably antiquated. He mentions frequently that leaving was the best decision he has ever made. Sun-Times management claims that he resigned in a typical snit—the atypical outcome being that they actually accepted his resignation. “He quit one time too many,” says Michael Cooke, the paper’s editor.

Of course, given the long-festering antipathy between Mariotti and the Sun-Times, his departure from the paper was untidy. “We wish Jay well and will miss him—not personally, of course, but in the sense of noticing he is no longer here, at least for a few days,” Cooke noted at the time. Over the next few days, it seemed that all hands at the paper gleefully assailed Mariotti in print and online. For his part, Mariotti predicted the Sun-Times’ demise on the CBS Channel 2 news, inspiring a rebuke from the paper’s conscience, film critic Roger Ebert. “As someone who was working here for 24 years before you arrived, I think you owed us more than that,” Ebert scolded. “The fact that you saved your attack for TV only completes our portrait of you as a rat.”

Says Cooke now: “Jay isn’t an evil guy, and there’s no questioning his work ethic. He’s just very difficult to manage and very difficult for his colleagues to get along with.” Insightfully, he adds, “Jay is often frustrated that nobody has the same frenetic energy that he does.”

As of late October, Mariotti was said to be negotiating with both local and national media outlets, the Tribune Company among them. (Earlier talks with the Chicago Tribune were complicated by a non-compete clause in his Sun-Times contract.) Wherever he lands, he’ll most likely become “Multimedia Mariotti,” his frenzy spread across television, radio, web, and print. During two afternoon conversations from the rooftop of the building where he films Around the Horn and at nearby eateries Le Peep Grill and Wishbone, he rattled with fresh, unvarnished opinions on all the swirling tumult.

MICHIGAN AVENUE: Give me one sentence describing your feelings toward the Sun-Times.
JAY MARIOTTI: I’m saddened that a once-vibrant American newspaper has deteriorated amid scandals, lack of editorial direction and vision, and dissension.

MA: What essential detail of your parting from the Sun-Times hasn’t been revealed?
JM: Not enough people understand that (a) I resigned two months after signing a contract extension; (b) I resigned because I don’t believe the paper has a website that will carry it into the future; and (c) whatever tension existed there, it never prevented editors from giving me contract extensions. So the fallout makes no sense. How do you go from “Here’s this big-money contract extension” to “He’s a rat” to “We’re not letting him work for another paper via a no-compete clause because he could hurt us”?

MA: What subjects don’t you have a strong opinion on?
JM: Not many. But hey, conversation is the spice of life. Are we all supposed to walk around like robots with homogenized thoughts? [In a robotic voice] “Yes, I agree with that. I’m afraid to write my feelings on things.” That’s why I’m a columnist and commentator. I do have lots of nice things to say, but sometimes you have to say the tough stuff, too.

MA: When in your career have you been most wrong?
JM: I’m wrong a lot. If you take strong stands, you’re going to be wrong sometimes. Jerry Reinsdorf was on year 25 without a world championship [as the owner of the Chicago White Sox], so I wrote, “The way this man does business will never win a World Series.” And he did. Was I wrong? Yeah. But shouldn’t the Chicago White Sox in a major market win more than once every 28 years? Something that bothers me about Chicago is that the standards are so low because the teams never win.... Well, you should win!

MA: After 17 years in our midst, do you consider yourself a Chicagoan?
JM: Yeah, by length of stay, by my kids growing up here, by writing more than 5,000 columns in this city. But just the same—not in the dyed-in-thewool sports fan way. A lot of people grow up here, and they never leave; they view sports as religion. They probably keep sports a little too close to their hearts for their own good because they get burned a lot. I’m the one guy here who lays out what’s really going on; I’m not here to be a fan or to cushion your feelings.

MA: Could you leave Chicago?
JM: I would leave to get back to the perception that I’m a writer, not a creature—because in Chicago, sometimes people don’t see the writing as much as the controversy. If I go national, I’m not attached to that emotion as much. I’m not going to USA Today, but if I wrote a column for USA Today about the woes of the Cubs, people would read the piece more than react to it.

MA: What advantages are there to appearing on television daily?
JM: I’m the same person who writes the column that appears on TV. But television gives people a clear vision of who I am. A column can be a cold form of communication. It’s funny how I can probably say the same thing on television that I’d write in a column, and people will respect what I say on TV and get mad at what I write in the column. But on TV, people can hear the inflection in my voice and detect the humor and sarcasm.

MA: How did you cultivate a relationship with Michael Jordan?
JM: The greatest thing about Jordan? I could be critical of him, and he wouldn’t hold it against me. I came at him hard during that gambling scandal. I went out to see him at a golf tournament when all of that was happening, and I’m thinking, “This is going to get ugly.” He sees me, and the next thing I know, he’s throwing ice cubes at me. It was his way of saying, “I’m pissed at you, but I’ll talk to you.” And he gave me great shit.
Same thing when he was coming back to play for the Washington Wizards. I’d go talk to him, and I’d write, “Jordan told me this, and I think he’s crazy.” The next day, he’d scream at me, but he’d give me more stuff. As recently as last winter, I went to one of his kids’ games—and he isn’t talking to anybody these days—and he gave me 20 minutes.

MA: How can the daily newspaper be saved?
JM: Take the Chicago Sun-Times as an example. The news source can be saved by upgrading its website, promoting its website, and developing a 24/7 mentality. That would make the Sun-Times a must-see site and allow it to be ready when the ad content inevitably starts coming to the website. You keep the paper around for older people, commuters, and people who just like reading a tangible product. Obviously, you run them in tandem, but the paper has to be deemphasized and the website has to be ramped up.
The serious papers are lined up on the Internet to some degree, and the papers that are going to go out of business are half-assing it. That’s really the core reason why I left the Sun-Times. I’m looking to the future, and I saw none at the Sun-Times. Meanwhile, I’m looking at other media outlets and seeing great futures. There will always be a place to read about sports. I just don’t think it’s smart for a writer in his late forties, like me, to be at a newspaper—especially one that’s failing. That’s professional suicide.

MA: Imagine, then, the fate of the newspaper columnist.
JM: He’s going to be a columnist/commentator. He’s going to be on the Internet, the radio, and TV. That’s why people in this town resent me, because I’ve done all of that. You’ve got to branch out. Unfortunately, a lot of [print] guys think that’s showboating. No, that’s moving on with the times. Sports are as popular as ever. People love to read about sports; they’re just going to do it online.
I was trying “Mariotti 24/7” at the Sun-Times. The Bulls make a trade—boom! Two hundred words. Maybe you add a video post and a long-form column. It becomes a multimedia blitz, complete with interactive chat rooms where people can yell at me. To me, it’s a new world. Why would I confine myself to this hole in a newspaper?

MA: Give me one sentence describing your feelings toward the Tribune.
JM: It’s fascinating to watch a couple of rockand- roll guys try to shake the stodginess from a stuffy company.

MA: Describe Jay Mariotti the coworker.
JM: I’m the best teammate you’ll ever have— if you’re in this business for the right reasons. If you’re a columnist who’s lazy, boring, political, doesn’t write the tough piece, you’ll hate me. If you’re a beat writer who courts the favor of the people you cover and knows more than you report, you’ll hate me. If you’re an editor who doesn’t have vision and guts, you’ll hate me. But if you care and have a soul, we’ll get along great. | MA